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Very interesting stuff. I am both an avid entrepreneur and book worm but must admit to having not read most of the books on your list. It is certaintly a great list to motivate me to get reading again. Keep up the great work!

My name is Crystal Williams, and I maintain a small business blog called Babeofbusiness.com. I recently did a piece on the best books for startups, where I included your book “Four Steps to the Epiphany.” If you have a few moments and are interested, I would love to have you post your recommended books in the comments section.
…

Read your book “The four steps …” and have enjoyed it and your blog. I have recently been doing some research on Entrepreneurship in Brazil, while also trying to start my own company. I wanted to ask you what you thought about “context” ? I.e a lot is written in general terms, mostly US centric. What about emerging economies, what caveats do they posses ? Also do you agree with the notion of Entrepreneurship as “opportunity recognition” ?

I enjoyed your book and I found it helped me connect a lot of dots which now make more sense!

Most of the examples you cite in the book are targeted on highlighting challenges faced by each of the respective companies. I was wondering if you have a couple of examples of companies that have utilized your methodology and enjoyed great market success crossing the chasm and becoming successful mission-centric companies from start ups?

I am currently reading The Four Steps to the Epiphany. The granular, tactical process that is laid out is amazing. I’ve experienced working for companies that did it the wrong way and one that went through the “death spiral” just as you describe. This thoroughly instilled in me that some sort of process more akin to yours must be the way to go. But until reading his book and blog I hadn’t known the exact steps to take and in which order.

Are there digital copies of some of the worksheets and checklists in the appendix of your book available in digital format? These would be extremely useful in getting buy-in and working collaboratively through the process across our founding team.

Steve,
This is an incredibly useful list and the book – 4 steps to Epiphany is a must-read for any startup. Pearls of wisdom, wish I’d read it earlier.
And I’m of an opinion that its the right way to productize for a large corporate as well. After all, most of them seem to have only one or two hits (or high profit margin products).

Hi Steve,
It was a pleasure to meet you at the Churchill Club event tonight. I met you immediately after the panel ended. I am an expert on Corporate Entrepreneurship and lecture in Drew Isaacs’ courses and CEE programs.

Big fan & great list – we use a lot of these tools for our lean startup.

I’d like to throw my hat in the ring for you to add http://www.mavenlink.com under the Project Management category and/or the Freelance category. We have an end-to-end suite that helps consultants and clients work better together. We’re lean and 40k people (and growing!) agree that we’ve got the best PM/time tracking/invoicing app out there.

Microsoft’s WebMatrix (http://www.microsoft.com/web/webmatrix/) tries to seamlessly combine many public web development tools (like dotNetNuke, BlogEngine, WordPress, Drupal, Joomla, Umbraco, …) in one place on Windows for deployment on your choice of providers for $2.99/mo and up. (I don’t work for Microsoft nor an ISP).

“Name, Domain name and Trademark” is a complex topic that, right or wrong, take a lot of time for entrepreneurs in the beginning. It should be added to this great list.
A new tool that will help the entrepreneur in the trademark issue is Markify – a trademark search that finds all similar trademarks. It covers both Europe ant the US, it is easy, fast and free. This kind of search normally costs more than $500…
Test your name http://www.markify.com/ so you don’t end up with a name that is confusingly similar to an existing trademark.

Steve,
Thanks for an incredible resource for entrepreneurs, which I’m going to be forwarding them to.

May I humbly also suggest under the “freelance” category, my own site: vWorker.com? It has better protections than Elance (100% free money back guarantees) and the same timecard monitoring as oDesk but is cheaper by 10-35%:

[…] Steve Blank is quickly becoming one of my very favorite writers/speakers on entrepreneurship. Everything he writes seems like it is a “must read”. His blog has a list of all kinds of wonderful tools for start-ups and such. His Twitter account is a must follow @SgBlank too. Check out the list of tools though HERE. […]

This is a great resource which I have shared with our users, many of whom are progressive startups with a frugal mindset.

I would love to see Assistly included on this list under the category of Customer Support. We are a featured Google App Marketplace company, and believe passionately in putting the customer at the center of the business.

Thanks again for a great resource. This is one of those posts where you say to yourself: Why didn’t I think of doing this?

Great ressource. Many of the tools I’ve never heard of, but I’ll check a few.
My ultimate tool I can’t live without: dropbox – it’s the best.
For freelancers and people looking for freelancers I would like to recommend twago (disclaimer: I work there): http://www.twago.com
Robert

Thanks for a great list!
Do you know TeamLab? http://www.teamlab.com
It is a web based project management and collaboration system. As distinct from similar solutions, TeamLab offers all the features for free with no limits – a very solid argument for most of start-ups and enterpreneurs.

Stumbled on your page by serendipity. I sold to you & PR function back in the day (SuperMac) and others to the many companies dating back, but finally E.piphany ~ MediaMap (now is Cision). Amazing list. The best part though is the tenacity link. Nothing really compares with that, does it? All the best!

Impressive list, but missing a key ingredient: Sales management tools. I think actually actively selling your stuff is very important for a startup these days. No-brainer for B2B companies but also for B2C companies (making special advertising deals for example)

I agree that help with sales is key for startups. I have found the step by step guideline of Kellogg Prof. Mohan Sawhney very helpful in clarifying the value proposition & positioning and crafting the messaging. It is a process supported by a set of videos, tools and templates.

Really enjoy your book and blog – thanks for your insights. I have a question though, how do you suggest moving through the customer development process when you are developing a product that you want to keep under wraps until its release (and thus maintain your market advantage)? My R&D company has a product in the works that we plan to sell to an existing customer base – but I’m challenged by how we engage these customers in the early design phases without letting the cat of the bag!

Great list some “must have tools” for any strartup. I also highly recommend podio.com for project management its fantastic for collaborating on ideas, bug tracking, feature requests and much more, I’ve tried a lot but it’s my favorite, very flexible and easy to customize. Good luck with your startups!

[…] Our team is following Steve Blank’s Customer Development methodology, which is rooted on startups “getting out of the building,” talking to customers and using that feedback to develop and refine their product. (For those who would like to learn more, Steve Blank has a helpful podcast called “Customer Development for Startups” and a blog.) […]

[…] trials to a dozen some-odd tools that help you kick ass all over the place. Steve Blank has a pretty good list, but definitely include KissMetrics and KissInsights, Google Analytics (free) and Apps (not as […]

I would recommend My eStore App ( http://www.myestoreapp.com ) it let’s new startup’s add ecommerce directly on your site for free and set up only takes 5 minutes. No coding required; works similar to google analytics.

I looked around but couldn’t find a good way to contact you. I work for Experience In Software, a small Berkeley-based company that’s been producing acclaimed business software since 1983. (Perhaps you’re familiar with Project KickStart?)

Yesterday we launched a brand-new project management application called Webplanner. I’m sure you’re very busy, but I wanted to invite you to give it a try. We’d be delighted to hear your thoughts: http://www.webplanner.com

Thanks for the collection. Its an awesome list. Really appreciating the work you’re putting in here. For inspiration you can include Mixergy.com, and also IncomeDiary from Michael Dunlop. There is also a new blog from Zak Taylor, http://www.yoranter.com, keep you’re eye on it, its a blog for online entrepreneurs.

[…] trials to a dozen some-odd tools that help you kick ass all over the place. Steve Blank has a pretty good list, but definitely include KissMetrics and KissInsights, Google Analytics (free) and Apps (not as […]

[…] and portfolio; watch out for linking scams. If you're interested in taking on some of it yourself, Startup Tools Great list of tools, articles, basically everything you need to get started. Goodluck! […]

Steve, I’ve been volunteering as an organizer of a Meetup which helps match Co-Founders. It started really small in Rockville, MD about 9 months ago, and people have been asking us to do more and grow into other nearby cities. Would you consider adding this under Groups and Incubator List

Awesome compilation, Steve. I didn’t see anything about “the exit” so I’m including a link to a deck I made awhile back that was pretty well received (over 5k views on Slideshare): http://slidesha.re/dnmrLH

And while we’re in shameless self-promotion mode, here’s a blog post called “Hacking Angel List” that had some legs (http://bit.ly/nGOHKm), as well as another on startup valuation ranges (http://bit.ly/5w3m1Z).

Let me know if any of that stuff is accretive to your compendium here.

In other news, I’m working building on a collection of “exit hacks” (tips, techniques for maximizing value)…would you want to share a few nuggets and lessons learned? Want to do an interview?

[…] Steve Blank is quickly becoming one of my very favorite writers/speakers on entrepreneurship. Everything he writes seems like it is a “must read”. His blog has a list of all kinds of wonderful tools for start-ups and such. His Twitter account is a must follow @SgBlank too. Check out the list of tools though HERE. […]

Hi Steve,
It was nice to meet you last week in Tallinn. I would suggest 2 useful tools built by Estonian startups:http://edicy.com – simplest and most beautiful website creation toolhttp://toggl.com – simple and easy time tracking tool

[…] Tools and technologies that you can use for rapid prototyping By yuri On September 20, 2011 · Leave a Comment Tweet Hello Accelerators, After pivoting and changing your idea in the last 2 weeks, now is the time to focus all your efforts towards you Minimal Viable Product. We have 4 weeks left till the Demo Day on October 16th. We are here to help you to succeed both on the Business Model side and the technology side. Most of the teams were assigned to a mentor that will lead them till the Demo day and make sure that you are on the right track in terms of the business model and that you are focused and know what do you want to implement for initial launch. We are going to be very strict and make sure that each of the teams will have live products. Remember that the faster you get live the faster you will get feedback from your customers and pivot if necessary. As a result, we will allow teams with live products only to present to a panel of investors. In order to be ready for the final you will have to prototype your MVP (Focus on the key feature that will make your customer to come back and use your product again), launch it, market it to your target customers, define metrics, collect metrics and statistics, analyze the metrics and refine your pitch deck (we will provide a template that you will need to fill), show traction to panel of investors. Remember that the panel of investors are looking at team cohesiveness, previous experience, ability to execute, show traction, social proof, business model and your target market. As most of you already started creating wireframes and the coding efforts I strongly recommend to use these tools and services: One of the complete sources of tools for startups is shown by Steve Blank in his blog post […]

There seems to be tremendous response to such startup tools lists, both here and in the lists linked at the top of the page. The reputation of the source recommending the tools obviously has a lot to do with it. Would there be any interest in organizing this in some sort of community curated directory? Tools might make the list based on some entry criteria: e.g. two or more sources that have used or read them recommend they get mentioned. Some benefits are that it would be searchable and discussions / testimonials could be organized around each recommendation, helping potential users/readers to get a better idea of what to expect. There is a LOT to select from here, so the community could help make the selection process smoother.

[…] first attempt at helping students answer these questions was by putting together the Startup Tools Page – a compilation of available web development tools. While it was a handy reference, it still […]

[…] first attempt at helping students answer these questions was by putting together the Startup Tools Page – a compilation of available web development tools. While it was a handy reference, it still […]

One other new addition is the blog writing service Blogmutt. “We work like a dog to fill up your blog!”

This is a service for companies with a site and a blog that is always the last thing that gets done, and it ends up being weeks and months between posts. For a low, flat fee Blogmutt uses a crowd of writers to create all-original posts.

What a fantastic list of resources! Thanks Steve for taking the time to put all of these tools into one place. Your readers might also be interested in http://www.testimonialmonkey.com which is a new customer review site that enables business to integrate their feedback directly into their web pages.

They offer a free 30 day trial for new users and the Lite package is free.

Steve:
You’re my new hero!
This list is filled with amazing goodies and is a real reflection.
I’m a big fan of your SV history lecture. My dad, a history buff, was copilot in a B24 over the last 6 ms of WWII. This shed new light on what they were up against. He would have loved this too.
The link on tenacity is so real and sweet…. a heartbreaker. TYVM.gene@ebm-inc.com

As an additional resource for “Billing/Subscription Management/E-Store”, I thought your readers would be interested in Plimus. We offer a global e-Commerce platform for sellers and affiliates who sell digital goods and services online.

Our platform supports several subscription models (from different trials to dynamic subscriptions) and has all the tools needed to help manage them.

[…] guide for a lean development of a minimum viable product, and provides a very helpful set of startup tools that span from business model development frameworks, to SEO and analytics tutorials. If you […]

Thanks for the collection. Its an awesome list. Really appreciating the work you’re putting in here. Here I also recommend another online project schedule tool-TABB. http://www.tabb.ca Maybe you can review and add it into your list.

Great set of startup tools Steve.
I’ve been referring to the list for quite some time now to build my own company, and waiting for the time we are ready to shamelessly suggest our own product – JobPage – http://www.jobpage.com

We provide many of the benefits of Recruiterbox and the Resumator, but we specialise in tech and marketing recruitment only. Our platform also pro-actively seeks out suitable candidates before they’ve even applied to one of our jobs.

[…] build massive systems in-house. Before you do it, look into third-party apps (here’s the mother load from Steve Blank) and talk to other entrepreneurs to see if they can help. Otherwise it’s a waste […]

Steve- this is great, thanks!
Having recently dived into the game myself, I’d add 2 very useful tools to the list to build up a user base before even launching the product:
launchrock, and kickofflabs, that both help sign users up in anticipation of the launch date.

Hey Steve – this is a brilliant list that I find myself coming back to time and again when tasked with, “Hey – Nick, find us a vendor for X.” It’s an easy way to get a who’s-who in each of these verticals, and we’ve been pretty happy with the vendors we’ve found (MailChimp, UserTesting.com, ClickTale, countless others).

I use this frequently enough that I think it would be terrific if you would consider our business for this list – FreedomVoice (http://www.freedomvoice.com). We’ve been in business since 1996, providing small businesses, startups, and entrepreneurs with 800 numbers and virtual phone service. We’ve recently branched into hosted VoIP telephony as well (www.freedomiq.com), a natural extension for growing businesses.

Maybe we could find a home under the “Misc Office Help” area – alongside vendors like Grasshopper or RingCentral?

Either way, my shame all-but-expunged, I just want to thank you for this is a ridiculously extensive, valuable, and constantly fresh list.

Hi Steve,
I read the french translation of your book “the 4 steps to epiphanie”.
The content appeared to me of great value for companies willing to put on the market successfull new products.
Nevertheless the french translation is very poor and appears offently as coming directly from a translating machine without necessary corrections or interpretations. This should make the content difficult to digest for non expertised persons.
Best regards and congratulations for your expertise.

Steve, here is a nomination for a Startup tool > 10Screens, a _free_ online prototyping and collaboration tool (“PowerPoint for prototyping”). Request you to include under “Wireframing tools” list.
TIA,
Sridh_ar

I’ve used this list as a reference for some time – thanks for curating it!

I thought you might want to check out http://startupplays.com – its what TechCrunch called a “Virtual Accelerator” and a “real viable alternative to current startup accelerators”. I thought you might want to include it in your list above – and would love to collaborate with you on building a “play”.

[…] that I think are greatly improving the planning process. The Lean Startup methodology, along with Steve Blank’s concepts in customer development, can change the game in how company’s get started. Yes, the […]

I’m currently in the SF bay area traveling and I’d like to buy a copy of the startup owners manual but I can’t find a store that carries it. Can you tell me where to buy a copy? I can’t do the online ordering because I’m traveling for several months.

By the way, could you include Keynotopia under Wireframing tools? It’s a rapid wireframing + high fidelity (pixel perfect) prototyping tool that’s been very popular among start-ups 🙂 In fact we even had one of our users win StartUp week-end using it that thanked us for the help 🙂

Excellent resources Steve, entrepreneurs will find this very helpful. I also bookmark this one on delicious. I believe that in order to be a successful entrepreneur you will need the right online tools and resources that can help you run your business smoothly and hassle free to progress. With these tools it can help you manage your business effectively and efficiently. You can also check this for more alternative tools that are very useful for entrepreneur to use. (http://www.timedoctor.com/blog/2011/04/14/compare-screen-monitoring-software) Using these tools it can help you improve collaboration, project management and team communication.

[…] *You need gear, gadgets, software. (But see above: they’d better be cheap or ones you invent). Happily the webby world is here to serve you, starting with loads of open source software. Some of the best apps are almost free: Thank you, Heroku, MailChimp, Dropbox, Balsamiq, Googledocs, Rondee, Facebook, SurveyMonkey and all the other snazzy tools Stanford prof Steve Blank mentions here. […]

You help startups a lot by making this list of definitely useful tools.

If it’s still open please consider to add our startup http://invitebox.com which provides the easiest way to add referral program to any website and allows to reward users for spreading the word through the most popular social networks.

[…] more about funding by reading Steve Blank, author of The Four Steps to the Epiphany, offers amazing tools, books, and other resources to startups. Our next blog will explore angel investors more deeply. […]

@Steve
Add Formassembly for survey tools – http://www.formassembly.com
They have unlimited form creation and responses in their free plan. All the companies currently listed have a limit on # of forms or responses with their free/basic plans.

Hi Steve,
It’s a really helpfull list!
I highly recomend you to add MOOVIA on your Project Management list. Moovia is a free business network for team collaboration and project management.http://www.moovia.com

Hey Steve, that’s a pretty comprehensive list of tools. I would suggest another great customer support tool, HappyFox. Its visual appeal, sophisticated design, impressive organizational capabilities and intuitive interface make it a standout tool. Give it a shot!

if anybody want to be a successful entrepreneur then he will need the right online tools and resources that can help you run his business smoothly and hassle free to progress.with that kind of tools one can easily managed the resources and business both effectively.Excellent resources Steve, entrepreneurs will find this very helpful.great work from your side done. i got so much information from your blog.Again thanks steve

Such a huge list!! – I’d recommend checking out OneDesk for project management , help desk and collaboration needs –

it’s an all-in-one unified solution for the entire process from ideation right through to delivery and support, aimed at keeping the whole team on the same page and placing as few barriers as possible between the flow of information between them.

Hey Steve,
That’s a pretty comprehensive list of tools. I would suggest another great customer support tool,HappyFox. Its visual appeal, sophisticated design, impressive organizational capabilities and intuitive interface make it a standout tool. Give it a shot!

Google Analytics is great for managing your website both when starting your business, and further down the line too. Bing have just launched some amazing new stuff for their analytics though – it kicks Google Analytics into touch.
thanks,
Jane

Hi Steve,
I couldn’t find a good way to contact you. May I suggest adding http://www.hloom.com/ to “Misc Office Help” section. The site is a repository of free office templates distributed under Creative Commons.

I was looking for some good tips for my own start-up and then realized that you be interested in adding it to the ‘Website Design Tools’. It could be useful for people, especially at the very early stages of getting a holding page up. http://www.plinqs.com

[…] 3) Startup Tools by Steve Blank – Boom! This site has the works. Everything you ever wanted to know about building an internet business including website setup, SEO tools, CRMs, wireframing tools and so much more! […]

We’ve referred to your list often in our efforts to launch and grow QAOnDemand. We provide startups with an easy and inexpensive solution for software QA testing and would appreciate if you’d add http://www.qaondemand.com to your website/browser testing section.

Under E-Store software, one of the more impressive programs is Pinnacle Cart from a feature set standpoint. It is pretty comparable to Volusion. Please let me know if you have any questions or would like to check out an extended demo.

This is honestly one of the most complete and comprehensive list of startup tools I have ever seen. The only part that threw me off was in reference to the web hosting/cloud services portions. I would imagine that most developers already have a rock solid foundation in regard to what web hosting is and who they should be using.

That being said, if the target reader for those links is someone who simply needs a business website up ASAP, I think the links could be slightly improved upon. Most importantly the website setup/tutorial and the web hosting tutorial links.

My goal with the site is to make it incredibly simple for a new business owner to put up a high quality site in less than hour with absolutely no amount of coding knowledge. It is still a work in progress, and feedback is of course welcome.

Steve, please let me know if there is anything I can do to make my website worthy of your resources page. And please keep blogging!! Your blog posts are by far the most well written and inspiring of any entrepreneurial blogger.

Awesome list of tools here. Please consider adding Swift-Kanban (http://swift-kanban.com) to the list of Project Management and collaboration tools. Designed and built under guidance from David J Anderson, father of the Kanban Method for software, it is being widely considered one of the top Kanban tools.

I suggest Breeze (http://letsbreeze.com), it’s a simple tool for agile project management.
Based on lean and agile principles (Kanban, Scrum). It’s kind a hybrid between Trello and Basecamp but adds more functionality that suites consultants and small businesses, mainly time tracking and reporting.

What is a comprehensive list of fast web tools to get your startup online?…

Steve Blank, the author of “The Four Steps To Epiphany” has an enormous pool of web tools for startups compiled in his blog. It has everything from Web Analytics tools to Customer Development tools. You can check out his blog by clicking on the link …

Hi Steve, we create an iPad app that helps with the Business Model, you could use the Business Model or the Lean Canvas, and iterate. In the next versions we will include a lot of the Costumer Validation to it.

Steve, great post! For those in need of a scalable content creation solution, I co-founded scripted.com. I also wrote this for Techcrunch recently, so wanted to pass it along (advice on raising seed capital from a founder’s perspective): http://techcrunch.com/2012/05/13/how-to-raise-1m-seed-round/. Great article – going to dig into some of these resources now!

Sorry about that intro video. We are testing that to see how it affects conversions. I guess in your case, you did not appreciate it and that is my view as well but the test is almost over and it will likely not automatically popup after the results from the testing are finalized.